Poetry Directory, Issue #2
Another small directory of formal poetry works by friends and Substack authors!
For a new and barely-breathing publication, our first directory reached a fair amount of people and helped us find fellow poets to include in this issue! I still believe that we can gather more, and that there are many who just need a little push to get started. Please comment on the Directories’ posts and send your poems to our subscriber chat to submit your work! I will be reading all of you! -B.
To keep formal poetry relevant, we must come together and share the spotlight with each other.
Welcome to our very own Poetry Directory, compiled and curated by Brooklyn Crane on The Formal Poetry Directorate! Quaterns, sonnets, sestinas; rhyme, meter, rhythm. All those things seemingly lost in the age of Instapoetry and the thought of “Just give up, dude”—clustered in one page for you to read.
Below, you will see poems gathered over the past couple of weeks, by genre and form. Please check out the authors’ pages and publications. To support each other is to support the art that has made us who we are today. Comment if you belong among us and would like to be involved!
My most sincere gratitude to, in alphabetical order, Alex Rettie, Ana Cristina Caelen, Anne HIlls, Digory Bell, Lee Summers, Margaret C Nikoleit, JRB Haiku, Rafa Joseph, Steve Arensberg, The Weekly Poet; for writing these pieces and carrying our traditions forth through time. I claim no credit for their works.
→ Abecedarian
A poem in which lines start with each of the letters of the alphabet in proper succession.
→ Cinquain
A poem consisting of five lines of 2, 4, 6, 8 and 2 syllables respectively, not necessarily rhymed.
→ Couplet
A stanza or section of a stanza constituted by two lines that rhyme.
→ Haiku
A three-line stanza or section which, in English, is comprised of 5, 7, and 5 syllables per line respectively.
→ Quatrain
A stanza or poem section of four lines, rhyming in ABAB, ABBA, AAAA, or any derivatives of these.
→ Sonnet
A poem form totaling fourteen lines in varying arrangements, either separated in groups or written as one whole. Traditionally written with iambic pentameter.
→ Visual Poetry
Poetry that creates an image with its arrangement on the page.
Please follow and support each other. Check out everyone’s work and other posts. We are all making an effort to preserve the roots and traditions of poetry while experiencing the world and capturing our experiences in verse. The only way we keep our niche alive is to face the future together. -The Directorate
Thanks for the shout-out! I have an earlier issue of this directory (in its previous incarnation at Scheming Rhymes) to thank for my discovery of Abram Newcomer's “Pray for Poets.” I liked that poem so much that I now know it by heart. I look forward to like discoveries of other poems and poets in the future. You are doing good work here, and I appreciate it.
Wahoo! Diggin in now.